


Broken Promise

by MelodicAscent



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, I love this ship, Kidge - Freeform, So I might have written this while I was in a bad mood, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 06:35:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13805520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelodicAscent/pseuds/MelodicAscent
Summary: Pidge needed somebody to rely on while her brother was gone. It turns out, the person who filled in for him was Keith. Scared of losing another person close to her, she makes him promise to never disappear. She should have known he'd break it.





	Broken Promise

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so, I might have had a fight with a friend that inspired this, a friend I really trusted and who turned her back on me. So that's kinda the inspiration here. Sorry if it doesn't make sense, it was written while I was in a state of emotional distress.

Pidge has never dealt with loss very well. Or any sort of separation, for that matter. When her dad and Matt disappeared, she was consumed by her combined rage, grief, and confusion. When she was first separated from the paladins and found herself in a space junk heap, it took all of five minutes for her to snap and make fake versions of all of her friends.

When Shiro disappeared, it was like Matt and dad all over again. Only this time, she wasn’t alone in her grief. Unlike her mother, who had shut everyone and everything out when half her family was declared dead, the other paladins were there for Pidge. She could grieve with everyone, especially Keith.

Shiro’s disappearance hit Keith harder than anyone. Pidge knew exactly why. Shiro was like an older brother to him. That’s when the two of them started opening up to each other more.

Funny how introverts are often the most extroverted when around each other. With Keith and Pidge, you’d never know they hated talking to people. They were there for each other, talking about loss and grief, talking about overcoming it, and talking about how to find their missing family.

One day, she rested her head against his shoulder as they sat in the green lion’s hangar. “Keith,” she asked, “are you gonna disappear one day, too?”

He rubbed her back, pulling her closer to him. “I promise, I’ll never disappear.” He planted a chaste kiss on the top of her head to seal his promise.

\-----

Everybody was shocked when Shiro came back. Keith announced that Black had found him, and that they had to go get him. Next thing Pidge knew, Shiro was in a healing pod, recovering from various injuries and almost dying from lack of supplies.

Pidge started to feel nervous. Six paladins, five lions. She went straight to Keith’s room, but apparently Lance had beaten her to it. She didn’t mean to overhear their conversation. But the “leave the math to Pidge” part broke her heart. Oh she had done the math alright.

\-----

Pidge lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. She tried to calm herself down. At present, Shiro couldn’t fly the black lion. She’d given up trying to figure out why, since the quintessence bond between paladin and lion borders on magic, and as somebody who is scientifically minded, she never really understood any of the magic stuff that they had encountered in space.

So many thoughts filtered through her mind. Shiro had started being a leader from the castle. But that didn’t make sense. Keith was the leader. He was the head of Voltron. But Shiro was technically their senior officer. She didn’t know who the rightful leader was.

She curled into a ball. Voltron was being torn apart. The battle for leadership was taking its toll on everyone, not just Keith and Shiro. With these thoughts in her mind, she drifted to sleep.

\-----

Pidge saw a memory.

She was with Matt, just before his flight to Kerberos.

“You’d better, or I’m coming up to space and getting you.”

The words came out of her mouth without her control. She wanted to reach out. She wanted to grab his arm and hold him back. She wanted to yell, to warn him of what would happen if he went to Kerberos. But her body didn’t respond. All she did was smile and put on her glasses, and she felt her heart breaking all over again.

“Matt!” she yelled finally, reaching out to him, but he was already gone.

\-----

She shot up in a cold sweat, breathing heavily. Tears streamed down her face. “I shouldn’t have let him go. I shouldn’t have let him go. I should have stopped him. I could have stopped him!” She yelled, burying her face in her pillow.

She rolled her blanket into a ball, hugging it tightly. “Matt!” she yelled again, wishing she could hold him in her arms.

She heard a soft knock on her door. “Pidge? Can I come in?” she didn’t respond, so Keith walked in anyway.

“Sorry if I woke you up…” she mumbled, holding her blankets tightly as she sat up. After hesitating, Keith carefully made his way through her room and sat next to her on her bed.

“Pidge…” he started, but stopped, thinking carefully about how to phrase his words. Then he remembered something. “Nano-thermi whatever, the stuff you found out those rebels that broke him out use? Have you found a way to track it?”

She shook her head. “Even if I could track it directly, there’s a low probability it would take me to Matt. Despite its rarity, I could chase signals all over the galaxy.”

“No, but maybe you can find the source?”

“What do you mean?”

“Figure out where they got it from. Maybe whoever gave it to them knows them.”

Pidge’s eyes widened. “A material like that wouldn’t be easy to get...we’d have to check the Unulu black market…”

“And I happen to know a certain ginger with a mustache who knows a lot about the Unulu.”

Pidge threw her arms around Keith’s neck. He flinched, but gradually hugged her back. “We can find him! We can find my brother!”

Keith smiled. Seeing her happy made him forget about his own troubles.

\-----

“...Keith, what are you doing in here?”

Pidge and Keith woke up simultaneously to find Shiro looking down at them. Pidge paused. Keith was lying behind her, his arm around her. She felt him tense up and quickly move away from her. “We didn’t do anything, I swear!”

Pidge smirked. “You’re making yourself sound more guilty,” she said, slugging his arm as she sat up. “Don’t worry, Shiro. I...had a nightmare. Keith heard me and came in to make sure I was okay.”

Shiro relaxed. Pidge sounded genuine, and he was aware that she had been having nightmares occasionally. “Alright, but Keith, I swear, if you do anything to her, her brother will kill me when we find him.”

The three of them laughed. Maybe Voltron wasn’t breaking as much as she thought.

\-----

She jinxed it. Of course she jinxed it. Despite how much she tried to stop him, Keith kept pushing everyone further and further away. He kept running off on missions with the Blade of Marmora, and every time Pidge was worried sick that he might get hurt. What he was doing was way more dangerous, because he didn’t have his team. As great of a fighter as Keith was, Pidge knew he was a hothead. That’s why they worked together.

He kept coming back with stories about how he narrowly escaped some explosion or how he saved the life of one of his friends.

But their promise still stood. She always knew exactly where he was and what he was doing. Everything would be fine. He would still be around, especially since he was the only paladin that could pilot Black. Right?

...right?

\-----

Even though it was great that Shiro was there to help them, something inside Pidge snapped. 6 paladins, 5 lions. The balance had officially tipped, and she dreaded what came next. She expected it, even.

After Keith announced that he would be leaving, Pidge threw her pillow at the wall. “He promised! He said he’d never leave! He said he wouldn’t disappear!”

“Pidge, calm down!” Coran yelled, gripping her shoulders. He was taken aback by the fire in her eyes. “Take deep breaths.” She took a few shaky breaths, then relaxed a bit. “Good. Now channel that energy, because I’ve just found where you can find somebody who sells nano-thermite titanium boron.”

\-----

Having Matt back helped fill the void. He kept her distracted from Keith during the day. With another genius on the team, the two of them could work together to find their father, and to liberate the empire. Matt’s return was a blessing to her.

At night, though, she often remembered what it felt like to feel his warmth behind her. It had been brief, but being in his arms had made her feel safe. And she was in front of him, so if anything came for them, she could protect him, too.

But now there wasn’t anybody to protect him. Sure, the Blade of Marmora were a decent team. But they weren’t a family. He wouldn’t have anyone there to watch his back while he did something reckless, because he always did something reckless.

“Pidge, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were getting over a breakup,” Matt said, sitting next to her.

“I might as well be. He broke his promise.”

Matt sighed. “More about Keith. Pidge, you’ve gotta accept the fact that he didn't feel at home here. He didn’t feel like a part of the family.

She snapped at him. “I tried! I did everything to make him part of this family, because he was my family when you were gone! I was his family, and he tossed me aside like I was nothing! Does he not understand what a promise means?”

“Holy cow, Pidge, how much do you like this guy?”

Her cheeks went pink and she turned away from him, both embarrassed at his comment and ashamed of her outburst. “He was the one who was there for me. He was the one who made the nightmares go away.”

“So you’re saying he’s like a brother to you?”

“Yes? No? Why do you care?”

“Woah woah, calm down. Just looking out for my little sister.”

She sat down on Green’s paw, staring at her shoes. Matt sat next to her, looking at her curiously.

“It’s just...I’ve lost too many people to this war. I can’t lose another person I care about.”

“It’ll be alright, Pidge. We know where he is, and he’ll visit often. It’s not like he’s gone forever.”

Wanting her brother to leave her alone, she just nodded. “Okay, you’re right.”

If only she could believe the words she said.

\-----

She was afraid of this. She was afraid that if he left the nightmares would come back.

Every night it was something different. Keith getting shot, Keith getting stabbed, Keith getting kidnapped, Keith being tortured, Keith being lost in space.

Keith crashing his ship in sacrifice for his friends.

That one hurt the most, because it had felt the most real. Keith would be the hothead who would sacrifice himself for everybody else.

She just wanted him there. She wanted him to come back. He was her teammate. Her friend. Her family. Her confidant.

And she loved him.

**Author's Note:**

> So...yeah. Another one shot. Been thinking about doing a Beauty and the Beast inspired story, but it wouldn't follow along with the movie or anything, just draw inspiration (similar to how The Lion King draws inspiration from Hamlet). If any of you are bronies and are familiar with DisneyFanatic's Bride of Discord series, that's the same kind of thing I'm going for. But, you know, with Kidge :P


End file.
